PC Bedtimes Cut Power Bills

By Greg McNevin

July 10, 2007: A new study by power management solution provider 1E has found that across the US almost 62.4 million office PCs are left on overnight and during the weekend, wasting a whopping US$1.72 (AU$2.01) billion in power and emitting almost 15 million tonnes of carbon per year.

That’s nearly half of all corporate machines in the US, sitting their idling away power every night. According to the study, this adds up to a waste of more than US$165,000 (AU$192,650) per year for a midsized company (10,000 PCs), and is roughly equal to taking 2.58 million cars off the road.

The study, conducted by 1E and the Alliance to Save Energy, found that most people believed that leaving on their machines allowed IT staff to perform maintenance and updates, while others thought that they would automatically hibernate. Depressingly, many respondents claimed that they just didn’t care.

“Few problems match an impact so large with a solution so simple,” says Karayi. “A computer uses energy even when it appears to be idle. Reducing that waste can help US businesses reduce costs and prevent tons of damaging greenhouse gases from being emitted into our atmosphere.

“Ideally, everyone would shut down their PCs at the end of the working day, but the research released shows that this just doesn't happen,” says Sumir Karayi, chief executive officer 1E.

1E claims that reducing both power costs and the burden on the environment can be as easy as simply deploying tools in which to automatically power down PCs when not in use, and allow them to be woken up remotely if patching is needed.

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